Democracy needs honest, current middlebrow history
By John Crouch, Attorney at Law,
Crouch & Crouch, Arlington, Virginia; (703)
528-6700;
Other Crouch Articles
I am concerned with the present and past states of the MIDDLE level of social
& political thought: the myths, metaphors and rhetoric of forgettable
but cumulatively influential politicians, journalists and preachers.
I think a democracy needs middlebrow history, or at least history for educated
non-historians. I would like to see if it can be done successfully with
less pandering to popular assumptions, romanticism and trivialization, and
more application of the concerns, and conclusions, of serious historians.
While the "whig interpretation" of the history of the Amercian
constitution is long dead and buried in academia, nobody has bothered to
inform politicians, lawyers, judges, novelists, journalists or their audience,
who still speak as if Woodrow Wilson had had the last word on the nature
of America's nationality, constitution, and political system.
- John Crouch, 1992 (From a seminar
application)
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